Post-Pregnancy Paring

After the baby arrived, I also discovered that I had really no time for extraneous nonsense.  Babies come with a lot of bric-a-brac -- I am in the process, always, of donating it to other people when we no longer need it.  But I also realized how much effort and time I had put into obtaining and maintaining stuff that I really don't enjoy all that much or have time for.  Clothes are a special example of this.  You know I had 14 pairs of dark wash bootcut jeans?  Nobody needs that.  NOBODY.  But over time, I had colonized a closet, dresser, and two wardrobes, and what was I getting from that?  Mostly, I couldn't tell what I owned, and often I owned duplicates of things that I only sort of felt I liked.  Beyond that, my closet was a tour of outfits I wished looked great on me, but which sort of fit poorly or were sort of pathetic facsimiles of my business wardrobe.  Anyway, it had to go.

1. I tossed everything that didn't fit.

2. I tossed everything that I don't pretty seriously like.  Someday I'd like only to wear things that I love, but I think step one is cutting down my collection so I can tell what things I need.  And I expect that list to be a little costly, so I need to keep some staples that I can mix in, as long as they function for me at this point.  

3. I tossed duplicates.  4 pairs of black athletic shorts.  Three pairs of athletic leggings.  The aforementioned dark wash bootcut jeans.  Good riddance!

4. I set reasonable numbers of certain types of items to keep, and I tossed the rest.  Well, I tried.  I still have a surprisingly large tee shirt collection.  But I probably have half of what I had.

So now I'm in the second round of culling, looking forward to being able to purchase some pieces that might help me define my personal style.  I do have it -- I just had to bring it to light by getting rid of all the stuff it was buried under.